


Pierce the Sun

by sun_incarnate



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Character Death, Heavy Angst, Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Blood, can u believe it my first 2021 fic and im like haha sunhak angst, i wanted them to be happy too yk, sorry was feeling shitty and i wanted to ignore other wips :P
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:00:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28985988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_incarnate/pseuds/sun_incarnate
Summary: In the end, an arrow is all the mercy Haknyeon's allowed.
Relationships: Ju Haknyeon/Kim Sunwoo
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Pierce the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> haha aj remember when days ago i said the world needs more haknyeon fics haha im so sorr[crowd booing]

Sunwoo dreams, and only in them is he allowed him.

" _There are no gods here_ ," Haknyeon says, loving and soft against the curve of his chest here, breath hotter than the coals of life. " _I have only you to worship, just like this._ " 

_Could you repeat these very words in front of my people, my kingdom, my king?_

_Facing your gods?_

[ "No, no!" Sunwoo has never begged for anything in his life, has never felt the desperation that comes in kneeling and scraping his knees against the dirt. It must make quite the scene, the prince reduced to a crawling beast, clawing at anything if it means he could grab time by the throat and make it stop even for just a moment. "Father, you don't understand, you can't do this!" 

If not for his dignity the king would have spat on his face already. Sunwoo knows this. "It is you who could not understand what it is you've brought upon us, boy. Why would you forsake the kingdom that lives under the crown you are soon to bear?"

One or the other, but even in this he is offered no choice.

His duties. A family, a queen, a child. Sunwoo has to give and give and he is made aware of this every single day he spends walking on castle floors, on carpets dusted often so dirt would stay underfoot and never on the jewels of his future crown. 

The one on his father's head, the crown that glares golden and harsh as this day he will live through but Haknyeon would not.

Haknyeon would not. ]

An owl hoots in the distance but it is no omen, not when he does not hear it. He has lovelier words to listen to.

The velvets and silks around his bed allow him the silence now, one he uses well to hear how affected Haknyeon is by him. If he'd known that he'd have had Haknyeon like this Sunwoo would have closed the doors to his chambers sooner.

He says just so, and Haknyeon has to separate his lips from skin to allow a quiet laughter. " _I have known of this night the moment I met you, and I say the timing's just right_."

" _By this I gather you've made your prince wait_."

" _And if you keep trying to make me talk you'd have to wait an entire night more_ ," but Haknyeon does not go back to kissing him right away, and it is this gentleness, for maybe Sunwoo's hesitant too, and this consideration is what has managed to wake something warm in him.

Always being reminded that with Haknyeon, he need not burn like the sun.

So Sunwoo gives and gives but receives in return, a full circle he hadn't been allowed before, and his head angles just enough that Haknyeon's licking into his mouth, tongue tracing tongue and so, so close Sunwoo is sure that this right now is what it must mean to be loved.

[ Soil under his nails, against his forehead, into the wounds on his palms. 

For Haknyeon, anything.

"Get up." 

His mother has attempted to borrow the sun's power when she's named him so, but now her mortality has proved useless. The queen had been no deity. She could not give him the protection she had wished for, and now Sunwoo's entire body burns under the midday heat. 

Sweat and tears turn the soil to mud, but it is not enough for the famine coming if Haknyeon's death is halted. Sunwoo is aware of this, and that hunger and scorch will just be the beginning if the gods are disturbed in their peace, but Haknyeon—

The courtyard turns silent, all the murmurs of the nobles and the court replaced by the dry wind, and without even looking up Sunwoo knows their time is running up. 

A shadow of the crown is all that Sunwoo has, and the ghostly absence of it marionettes him into powerlessness. 

The king is stood in front of him, and Sunwoo thinks of kissing his feet if it means Haknyeon gets to live. Anything. Any thing.

"My king, I—" then he realizes that he is nothing without a greater title. Whatever it takes. Then, "Father."

"Couldn't you spare him, even just for my sake?" Mud smears leather when he lays his fingers just at the tip of his father's boots, and Sunwoo tearfully begs for the first time in his life. "Father, you need not have his blood on your hands."

"My hands?" His father crouches and lifts his face up, and at his next words Sunwoo's tears finally flow. 

"Sunwoo, it is not I who has loved him." ] 

" _You say you've already seen me like this on your mind._ " 

Haknyeon nods, " _And from then on I've dreamt of you, always like this_." And Sunwoo is momentarily transfixed by the bead of sweat that rolls down his neck. He puts a finger to stop it, but just underneath the skin Haknyeon's pulse is full and loud, a caged bird beating against the confines of his skin.

Sunwoo follows the vein until it disappears under the contour of Haknyeon's jaw, and he presses a kiss there, marking where he could not follow the evidence of the other's want.

It's too much, to think that Haknyeon has relived this very moment every time he is put to sleep. " _Me under you, every night?_ "

Haknyeon kisses his forehead, and Sunwoo is greatly comforted by the correction that comes after when Haknyeon looks into his eyes to say, " _Me being allowed to love you. Every night_."

[ "The oracle has proven himself straying from the way of the gods. May they see his death as a purging of the wrong, and may they bless us the chance of housing another." 

Haknyeon, ever-defiant and shining, the gods he has forsaken for a night with the prince now turning their backs on him, on their favored one, on the living proof that their grace could be made mortal.

Sunwoo has no voice amidst the cries of praise but the words he mouths are enough for Haknyeon to smile despite everything. ]

" _How come you by the gift of sight?_ "

He thumbs at the tattoo on Haknyeon's forehead, a simple ring circled by rays reaching outwards. Burned black to his skin by the kingdom's council of elders, a story Sunwoo has heard from him often ever since. The mark of the blessed, the chosen, the one person alive closest to being divine and omnipotent. 

A sun. 

Each time he touches it he hopes to make it his, a brand of his love made by his name instead of a reminder Haknyeon has to carry and constantly answer to.

Haknyeon kisses his open palm. " _A dream came to me_." He gets off of Sunwoo and they lay sideways, facing each other and so near they need just one pillow. Close like this, fated like this. 

" _And in it I met you_." This reassurance, this that comforts them both despite the trailing threats of their love's discovery, that Haknyeon was always meant to meet Sunwoo no matter what.

That the gods themselves have caused their paths to cross. What is greater than the divinity of all this?

" _You took notice of the tattoo I was yet to have, and you said that by bearing a part of your name, I am already yours_."

[ "I love you." ]

_You are the greatest blessing I could have asked for._

_Have you seen another future, where the both of us will live with what we are not permitted to have now?_

_My own mother had been no deity, but she's given me a name that allowed me all the protection I would need and more._

_So much more._

_Could I protect you with this same grace?_

[ Sunwoo's begging stalls the swing of a sword. 

In the end, an arrow is all the mercy Haknyeon's allowed to have. ]

Sunwoo could not think of anything more cruel than hiding all this. Haknyeon is almost all-seeing, put inside the castle's walls to protect the gift he has. The wars and calamities they have avoided has earned him the place directly next to the prince in anything official, a high regard deserved as he bears the kingdom's future along with the next king.

" _I have seen limited visions about the kingdom, but I have known everything concerning you_." 

" _Then you must have seen the life we are to have together_." 

It's nothing but a tease, albeit a hopeful one, and Haknyeon must know of the mask Sunwoo has always worn when the world is seeing him. He has a thumb stroking Sunwoo's cheek, the rest of his fingers splayed against the side of his neck, and the smiles they share are so tainted with truths and fears that Sunwoo closes his eyes to not see them.

In the silence the owl cries again, but Sunwoo's eyes are still closed, and he fails to see how Haknyeon tries to not let his tears show as he whispers against Sunwoo's barely-awake senses.

[ An arrow. Swift and sure and so, so far away. One to his heart, and Sunwoo remembers his own lips pressed against where blood now blooms outwards.

All Haknyeon's life he's dreamt of being intertwined with Sunwoo's fate, always towards him and never for himself but this is what he ultimately gets in return. 

"You could have had anybody else, Sunwoo," his father lays a hand on his shoulder, and Sunwoo is still kneeling, struck with the horror of it all. "I could have allowed you even with the lowest of the noble ladies, and yet you chose a supposedly-untouchable man."

The one person that knows Sunwoo leagues above everyone else, and he's killed for falling in love with what he knows best.

"If you had married even just a respectable woman, maybe he wouldn't be kneeling before us now." 

Haknyeon falls to his side, and a passing patch of clouds has sunlight coming down to only him. ] 

" _As long as I live, you will have me_."

[ Sunwoo, and the blood on his hands. All of this, for Haknyeon loved him and him alone.

Clear through everything, through distance and haze and tears, is the sun on Haknyeon's skin. ]

Sunwoo screams, and wakes to the living nightmare once again.

**Author's Note:**

> i swear it isnt like this all the time here are my socials im pretty un-angst in them :]  
> [my twt!](https://mobile.twitter.com/jjukyus) [my curiouscat!](https://curiouscat.qa/kyuisms)


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